History

The story begins in 1956 when serious consideration of a Canberra replacement began at English Electric,
in cooperation with the Ministry of Supply. At the time the MoS wanted a small, fast, strike-fighter.
Official thoughts turned to developing the P.1B (soon to become the Lightning)
but English Electric preferred an all-new aircraft. Studies began on both ideas, and by a
month later clearer requirements were also forthcoming. What was wanted was an aircraft
with a 2,000 nautical mile [ferry] range, capable of Mach 1.5 at altitude, able to carry
a variety of weapons and reconaissance equipment, attack at very low level, and perhaps with
vertical or short take-off capability. English Electric had been working on a design designated the P.17,
and this moved on from their initial layout (basically straight wings with podded engines
hanging off them) to being a delta wing design with engines buried in the rear fuselage.

Discussions began in the MoS and the RAF. Soon more specific requirements were made
available - a crew of two was required, at least four and preferably six 1,000lb bombs
were to be carried, and more emphasis was put on low-level performance and short take-off
runs, with a preference for vertical take-off. The developed P.1B, the P.18, fell by the
wayside as it was not proving to be a viable proposition. Around this time a report on
the supply of military aircraft was issued by the House of Commons Select Comittee on
Estimates. It included recommendations to limit the number of aerospace companies by forcing
them to band together to win contracts. This was the beginning of the end for the majority
of the famous British aircraft manufacturers. Meanwhile, the air staff were drawing up
General Operational Requirement (GOR) 339 to cover a Canberra replacement, and finished it days
before Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Defence, announced in the infamous 1957 Defence White
Paper that manned aircraft were effectively obsolete and the only aircraft the RAF would need
in the foreseeable future would be the nuclear-armed V-force and fighters to protect the V-force
airfields. GOR.339 was then the subject of much debate before it was finally issued to various
companies in late September with the condition that only firms that joined together would be given the contract.

P.17A launching from P.17D platform; BAE Systems

Of the various submissions to GOR.339, only those from English Electric (with Shorts) and
Vickers-Armstrongs were really viable. Shorts Brothers' outlandish idea was for the English
Electric P.17A to be joined by the P.17D, a lifting platform with no fewer than 56 jet engines
which would lift off vertically and from which the P.17A would then launch. Understandably this
idea did not come to fruition! Over the course of the year the requirement was refined, reissued,
renamed and renumbered - first OR.339 then OR.343. Now operation from semi-prepared strips was mentioned along with higher speed, longer range,
higher altitude, shorter take-off run... the straight-forward Canberra replacement was
rapidly becoming the stuff of science fiction, plus the MoS wanted the new aircraft to
fulfill every role the Canberra was undertaking, including reconaissance. The MoS had decided
Vickers Armstrongs and English Electric and would be awarded the contract - but only if they banded
together to produce a joint design. The public acknowledgement of the new project was made on 1st January 1959
when the name of "TSR/2" was first used (standing for Tactical Strike and Reconaissance, Mach 2).

Blackburn P.150 - a supersonic Buccaneer that could have fulfilled the TSR2 requirement; Roy Boot

Blackburn Aircraft had also submitted to GOR.339, offering their Buccaneer,
but the RAF were not interested. The idea of settling for the Buccaneer had a lot
of merit; developing a completely new aircraft was obviously going to cost much more than
modifying an existing one. However, the RAF would have none of this - they had nothing but contempt
for this naval aircraft, and inter-service cooperation was a concept far removed from their
minds. Indeed they would make efforts to sabotage the navy's acquisition of the type, and make significant
enemies in the process. Over the next few years Blackburn would submit a number of improved Buccaneer variants, but
they were always rejected. Blackburn's P.150 design (which appeared some years later in 1968) was a proposed
supersonic Buccaneer with Spey engines with reheat, new TSR2 style intakes, longer fuselage, thinner
non-folding wings and twin mainwheels. It gives some idea of how Blackburn may have proceeded
had their been any interest in their GOR.339 proposals. Despite this lack of interest, the Buccaneer
would return to haunt the TSR2 project later on.

TSR2 plans; author

Progress continued within Vickers and English Electric to combining the two company's
designs to form a single design that could satisfy OR.343. By July 1959 they had submitted
their new design (which, visually at least, bore noticeable resemblance to English Electric's P.17A)
despite worries about the restrictive aspects of the specification and incomplete design work.
Agreement on work-sharing had been reached, though no detailed arrangements were in place. First flight
was scheduled for March 1963 with introduction into service by January 1966. While the contract had been
expected by late 1959, it was not actually awarded until October 1960, a year late.
The delays had begun even before the first part was manufactured, hardly a good omen.
In the meantime the British Aircraft Corporation had been formed (on the 1st of January 1960);
with the formation of Hawker-Siddeley as a single entity a few years later (it was already around
as a group of companies in 1960), much of the British aviation industry would be contained within
one of two groups, BAC and Hawker-Siddeley.

TSR2 production underway at Weybridge; BAE Systems

The government had looked at American methods of project management and development, and
while finally admitting that the American's methods were superior to traditional British methods,
they make a complete mess of implementing these improved methods. To all intents and purposes it
appeared that the government's version threw away all the good points and kept the bad - the new,
more 'efficient' management techniques would soon turn into the most bloated and inefficient
bureaucracy ever seen in the aviation industry. One celebrated incident occurred when a meeting
was called and the meeting's chairman decided that far too many people had turned up. He cleared
the room and asked for only essential personnel to turn up for the second attempt at the
meeting. When the reconvened meeting arrived, and the essential personnel had trooped in, it was
found that there were actually more people present than in the first meeting.

Vulcan XA894 with underslung Olympus 320 engine for testing - this aircraft
was shortly to be destroyed on the ground when the engine failed disastrously; Rolls-Royce

Design and manufacture proceeded despite these problems and despite poor cooperation between the constituents of BAC,
the Ministry of Aviation and the various sub-contractors - most of whom were not
working for BAC, but were working for the Ministry instead, with communication problems
being a result. The Ministry's interference extended into the design and manufacture of the
aircraft itself; they took charge of the cockpit layout, and often had three hour meetings to
decide the location of a single switch (and often got it wrong). Compare that arrangement with
the Vulcan cockpit design, where the chief test pilot, Roly Falk, fought for and got permission
to design the cockpit himself; after all, who better to decide the layout than a pilot?
Other forces were gathering against the TSR2. The Americans' TFX programme
had begun, and the Admiralty were still keen to see the Buccaneer purchased by the RAF.

BAC had been having talks with the Australians and had high expectations of an export order
for the TSR2. By this time Lord Louis Mountbatten, the First Sea Lord, had became famous within the industry
for his opposition to the TSR2 and strong support of the Buccaneer. Mountbatten said his piece to the Australians;
the Ministry of Aviation failed to announce a firm order for the RAF; the Americans offered a cut-price deal on the
TFX. As a result, in October 1963 the TSR2's export prospects disappeared - the Australians had chosen to buy the TFX instead.
That this would cost more than four times more than they had been told and would be 10 years late into service was not
something they expected.

Preparations for the first engine run; BAE Systems

Engine development problems had also surfaced. The Bristol-Siddeley Olympus engines were
an all-new development and suffered various problems, which resulted in the destruction
of a Vulcan testbed aircraft on the ground, putting back the first flight of the TSR2 as a result.
With the first aircraft now complete, it was transported by road to Boscombe Down. Vickers had wanted test
flying to begin at their airfield at Wisley, but the chief test pilot, Roland Beamont, objected to this because
of the shorter runway there. English Electric's airfield at Warton would have been ideal, but the Ministry of Aviation
forced the firm to use Boscombe Down instead. This meant more delays; neither company had a base of operations there, and the
aircraft had to be reassembled at Boscombe over a period of a month. On the 6th of May 1964 the fully
assembled first development batch aircraft, XR219, was removed from its hangar at Boscombe Down to begin testing, including
taxi trials. Various minor problems occurred, including the failure of the braking parachute to deploy on one
fast taxi run, but most were overcome.

The cause of the engine problems was finally identified in September, only days
before the TSR2 was due to fly, and the engines then in the aircraft were vulnerable to the
same issues. However, with pressure on the project increasing all the time,
it was decided to go ahead with the first flight. A general election was looming, and a change of government was
widely expected. Obviously BAC hoped that presenting the new government with a flying aircraft would put
some firmer foundations under the troubled project. The final decision was down to BAC's chief
test pilot; Roland Beamont. Despite the engine problems (they could have blown up if too much time was spent
beyond 98% power), despite many items of equipment not being ready and despite expected problems with the
undercarriage and braking parachute, he decided the flight should go ahead; he was prepared to accept the risk for
a single flight.

First development batch aircraft, XR219, takes to the air for the first time; BAE Systems

Had an engine failed on this first flight, the remaining one would have had to have been run at
maximum, and that could have been disastrous. On the 27th of September, the first flight was duly made, with
Roland Beamont - callsign Tarnish 1 - as pilot and Donald Bowen as navigator. XR219 flew and
performed generally as it had been expected to. Beamont summed up the flight as 'a very good start'.
However, XR219 at this point was in no way representative of an operational version; with limitations
on engine power, many missing systems (to hurry up the first flight) and no attempt made to retract the
undercarriage (a complicated affair made necessary by the lack of room in which to place it and the
rough field requirements in the specification).

XR219 on Flight 2, showing just how dirty the engines were; BAE Systems

After that first flight no more flights were carried out until the end of the year, by which
time the engine problems were beginning to be overcome, though flight tests then proceeded slower
than they could have because of remaining niggles with the undercarriage and engines. The engines were
not the relatively clean engines of present-day jets. Each engine produced thick black smoke, which,
with the TSR2's distinctive wingtip contrails, meant that it was not hard to spot a TSR2 in the
air! Other problems continued also. Serious vibration problems related to the undercarriage meant
that at the instant of landing, the crew were violently thrown around. Further serious vibrations at certain throttle settings
were also intolerable, with the vibration being at the resonant frequency of the human eyeball thus causing loss of
vision to the pilot. This was finally traced to a faulty fuel pump.

Main gear malfunction on flight 4; BAE Systems

Undercarriage problems were not limited to vibration; there were also sustained problems
with hydraulics and sequencing. Malfunctions varied from doors refusing to close to more serious
problems like one leg staying extended while the others had retracted correctly. On one occasion
the undercarriage came down but the main bogies did not lock into the correct position.
Nothing could be done to get the gear down correctly, so Beamont told his navigator, Don Bowen, that it could
be time to leave by Martin Baker (i.e. eject). The boffins on the ground, however, thought that a safe
landing could be made if the descent rate was very low. Beamont and Bowen bravely elected to stay
with the aircraft and try to land it. In the event, the landing was successful, the bogies rotating into
the correct position as the aircraft settled onto the extended gear. Finally, on flight number 10, after
four months of attempts to fix the problems, the undercarriage was successfully retracted. Beamont soon decided
that XR219 was ready to continue its flight test programme at Warton.

XR219 on Flight 14 at high altitude; BAE Systems

Flight 14 was XR219's trip to Warton, during which it went supersonic for the first - and only -
time. The TSR2 was taken smoothly through to Mach 1.12 with one engine in reheat, briefly leaving the Lightning
chase aircraft behind until it engaged reheat to catch up. The TSR2 programme was, however, now under serious and
concerted attack; poor management and inter-company cooperation had caused spiralling costs and rumours abounded of
impending cancellation. In early 1965 the national newspapers reported that an RAF team
was in the USA to consider purchasing the TFX (F-111) instead of continuing the TSR2
programme - despite Labour promises to aviation industry workers that 'Your jobs are safe under Labour'.
Urgent discussions between BAC and the new Labour government ensued, and there
was even a protest march in London where 10,000 BAC and Hawker-Siddeley employees demonstrated against
cuts in the industry. The government issued such strong denials of cancellation that The Times quipped that
they had 'struck fear into the heart' of the industry. The problem was simply the money the TSR2 was
soaking up - the aircraft's development costs had gone up time and time again, and the entire programme
had been continually under threat nearly from day one. Labour believed the TFX could be a cheaper
alternative, and that they could re-deploy aviation workers to 'more productive' work.

Meanwhile, XR220, the second aircraft, had undergone inspection and repairs after being damaged on delivery
to Boscombe Down (it had literally fallen off a lorry!), and was ready to fly for the beginning of April after repeatedly delayed delivery of
flight-capable engines. That the aircraft was incredibly advanced was not in question; and the problems
besetting development were being solved one by one. But the specification was continually being downgraded to allow
BAC to meet it, and the RAF was getting ever colder feet. All of the hard work would be to no avail.
XR220 would never fly; the government, in the Budget Day announcement on the 6th of April 1965, announced that the TSR2 programme
was to be terminated immediately.

The aircrew were at the time having lunch near Boscombe Down; on hearing the
shocking announcement they rushed back to the airfield in an attempt to get XR220 into the
air and to at least present the government with a second flying aircraft. This was not to
be; permission was denied. While the management of BAC were informed before the budget speech
was made, they were forbidden to tell their employees, who then had to hear the news on the
radio. The House of Commons was in uproar over the cancellation; but no debate could take
place during the budget speech so not only had the government treated BAC's workforce with
contempt, they had tried to slip a major defence project cancellation past the opposition.
A debate one week later in the house was a rough ride for Denis Healey (the new Minister of Defence),
who tried to justify the cancellation on the basis that the F-111 could be bought
more cheaply, though he could not state a real cost or exact timescale for the buy. Whatever
happened from now, redundancies in the UK aviation industry were inevitable.

Chunks of TSR2 airframes in a scrap yard; BAE Systems

XR219, XR221 and XR223 were eventually taken to the shooting range
at Shoeburyness, all to be destroyed as 'damage to aircraft' targets. XR220 was kept at
Boscombe for a year or so for engine noise testing and then placed in storage at RAF Henlow for the nascent RAF Museum
after it had much of its flight test equipment ripped out (even the wires were cut rather than disconnected). It was
later transferred to RAF Cosford's Aerospace Museum and remains there to this day. XR222 was gifted to the College
of Aeronautics at Cranfield for instructional use. She was later donated to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. All
the other airframes were eventually scrapped though many components were held onto for research purposes. Within around
a year of cancellation, the jigs had been disposed of, a wooden mockup of the TSR2 was burned (while BAC men filmed it
for publicity purposes). With good photographic and film coverage of the airframe scrapping and mockup burning, BAC
made sure that the cancellation would never be forgotten, leading to years of exaggerated stories of the project's
destruction.

Cancelled in the months before were Hawker-Siddeley's two major projects; a new transport
aircraft, the HS.681, and the P.1154 tactical strike fighter (the 'supersonic Harrier'). The P.1154 had also been victim of the
infighting between the Navy and the Air Force, but some good was to come of these two cancellations.
The P.1127, a less ambitious project, was allowed to proceed. This became the Harrier, a world-beating
VTOL light strike aircraft and fighter which has since been developed into a number of versions
for countries around the world, including the UK, the USA, India and Italy. The P.1154 itself
was replaced by the US-made F-4 Phantom, though re-engined with British Spey engines. Problems with
the Spey and Phantom marriage meant that not only were British Phantoms the most expensive of all, but
they also performed nowhere near as well as the original US models. The TFX programme continued in the US; but when it too became massively expensive and
development ran into major problems, the UK (and the US Navy) cancelled their orders. Britain
was to pay hugely for the TSR2 cancellation; not only in the waste of the TSR2 development,
but now in cancellation fees to General Dynamics. An attempt to produce a swing-wing aircraft of our
own in cooperation with the French (the AFVG) ended in failure too.

XR219 awaits her fate at Warton in mid 1965; BAE Systems

BAC survived the TSR2 cancellation; the only other major project not cancelled was the Anglo-French
Concorde supersonic transport, which while never being a massive commercial success, gave BAC
valuable experience and prestige both with advanced aircraft and with international cooperation.
The SEPECAT Jaguar, near enough a 'baby TSR2', gave them even more experience of this kind
of cooperation, and produced a useful strike aircraft, though it did not compare with the
TSR2. Following soon after came the MRCA (Multi Role Combat Aircraft, or, more cynically,
Must Replace Canberra AGAIN!) project, a truly European project, which despite its detractors
produced another world-beater - the Panavia Tornado.

XR222 preserved at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford; author

Strangely, in 1979, there was a brief attempt to revive the TSR2
programme, with a private company looking at possible modifications to bring it up to date (square
intakes with variable ramps like Concorde, modern electronics, Olympus 593 engines as per Concorde and so on)
and badgering government and RAF departments with letters about resurrecting the aircraft. As they suggested
using XR220 and XR222 as prototypes for this 'new' TSR2 and the Tornado was not far away from flying,
it was frankly no wonder that this idea went nowhere. As it turned out, the Tornado eventually became more or less what
the TSR2 was to have been. That it was still slightly less capable in some areas than the TSR2 had been projected to be
a full fifteen years earlier says a great deal about how ambitious the TSR2 specification really was, and just why
the project turned into such an expensive monster. That the TSR2 was all-British (bar some electronics) and the
Tornado required the cooperation of three countries also says a great deal. TSR2 would not have been perfect - but
it still could have been a world-beater - if we could have afforded to make it so.

Leading Particulars

First flight

27th Sep 1964

Crew

Two - Pilot and Navigator

Armament

Final specification called for carriage
of 2 x WE177A/B nuclear weapons, up to 10 x 1,000lb HE bombs, rocket pods, 2 x Martel missiles or a reconnaissance pack.

* This is not a genuine total in the usual sense and consists of the development batch airframes (9), static test airframes (2) and pre-production airframes (11).
At the time of cancellation, there was one flyer, one ready to fly, two more practically complete and the rest in various stages of construction. Of the two static test airframes, one was complete
and in use, and the second was nearly complete. Eleven more airframes were to follow in the pre-production batch, but progress on these was mostly limited to rear fuselages - and even these were not
actually complete when cancellation came.

Visitor Comments

129 people have commented on this page. This is comment section 1 of 13.

Harry Amos from Worcestershire

Posted at 1:59pm on Sunday, May 28th, 2017

My Father worked on the Tsr2 at Warton,He was stationed at RAF WEeton,I was about ten then but I still recall how devastated he was when they canned the TSR2,He went on to work on the harrier Jump Jet,and the Rapier Missile,and something called the blue streak missile in the USA.

Ernie Carter from North Yorkshire

Posted at 11:11am on Thursday, January 7th, 2016

what a match with the cancelled avro arrow in canada!!!! would have been some RAF

David Powell from Monmouthshire

Posted at 4:28pm on Monday, October 20th, 2014

I have a small suitcase with several kg of stainless steel parts from the TRS2 (cylinders, shafts and circular bits) Would anyone be interested in having them?

Adrian Flitcroft from High Peak

Posted at 12:36pm on Thursday, August 7th, 2014

When I first saw footage of the TSR2 taking off I can distinctly remember that my first impression was what a lousy undercarriage- NOT the first impression you should get when watching footage of what was alledged to be our most advanced aircraft ever. I also thought that the nose was too small for an effective radar/attack system. Years later my father happened to mention that he had worked in the drawing office on the TSR2; his description of it was it was a tube with some wings stuck on it.
As an aside ... read more »read more »

Peter Rowlands from larnaca marina

Posted at 4:53pm on Thursday, February 27th, 2014

I was at eeco reinforced plastics and watched the flights at warton
My wife was bill eaves daughter in law They were interesting times and the plastics site now looks derelict when last passed on the bus.

Colin Nantais from Norwich

Posted at 9:24pm on Saturday, November 30th, 2013

My father, Cyril Nantais, worked for BAC and spent many months working on the TSR2. If anyone out there knew him I'd be really pleased to hear from you. This site is amazing. I was a teenager when all this was going on and looking back now realize what momentous days those were for Britain.

Stephen Hipkiss from Tipton

Posted at 12:25am on Friday, November 15th, 2013

I've read a lot about it. Got the DVD. I live not far from XR220 and go and say hello when I can. It is a sad tale. But in the end it seemed to be brought down by vested interests. Be it the scandalous behavior of the RAF or the incompetence of BAC. The shocking things about the design are that Britain was at the peak of it's powers in aircraft design, yet couldn't get large parts of the basic airframe right. Including the natural frequency of the aircraft and it's undercarriage. People often think it was t... read more »read more »

Paul Scott from London

Posted at 1:56pm on Friday, September 13th, 2013

A beautiful aircraft, I would've loved to see it flying in RAF colours, but as much as I hate to admit it, the F-111 was a far more capable aircraft, once its own problems were ironed out.

Norman Wells from Courbiac 47370

Posted at 11:27pm on Sunday, September 8th, 2013

The part that Wilson's team played in the TSR2 cancellation had already been rehearsed by the previous government .Whoever was in power at the time would have had to cancel it

The aircraft itself was in fact an advanced design as its few flights demonstrated . But to complete the development of the equipment with which it would have been fitted for its intended role would have been ruinously expensive. The country could not afford it even though ironically it would not have been fit for purpose for at l... read more »read more »

Norman Wells from Courbiac 47370

Posted at 8:39pm on Sunday, September 8th, 2013

The contract for a full flight Simulator for the TSR 2 was awarded soon after the design construction and development of the aircraft itself had commenced and was awarded to General Precision Systems {GPS} Ltd of Aylesbury Bucks[Which later merged with Redifon] This was the company which produced the flight simulators for the RAF's Lightning aircraft into which had been embodied an advanced simulator for the AI23 Radar Fire Control System ,designed and developed earlier by a small group of engineers led b... read more »read more »